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Indian author from New York, Mangalore, and elsewhere. Many of my books, such as The Revised Kama Sutra: A Novel, Impressing the Whites, and The Killing of an Author use humor and satire to make serious points. Only my books speak for me; blogs are impulsive, often un-edited exercises in free expression: a symbolic resistance to being silenced by the Establishment.

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The Empire Bites Back

The Empire Bites Back is my new collection of humor for those with an anti-colonialist spirit and who are looking for Politically Incorrect Humor from an Indian Writer partially colonized by the American Empire, and yet without having lost some capacity to bite back.

It is also for those who are NOT interested in smartass answers from children with precociously adult language.

My comic influences are wide-ranging, and include Mark Twain, British humorists such as Evelyn Waugh, P.G. Wodehouse, Monty Python; the Marx Brothers, George Carlin and American standup comics, Punch, The New Yorker, and others.

In it, I provide the complete "Death of a Minister"--my answer to every corrupt Indian politician from Lalu to Suresh Kalmady.

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Much of politics and history, especially in the U.S., is about Us and Them. Us, the Good Guys, versus much of the Rest of the World: the Bad Guys. If you're with us, with moral as well as material and diplomatic support, you're also good guys (though not as good as us). If you're against us, or simply not with us, you're bad guys. And our mission is to bomb, starve, and sanction you into changing your mind.

Historian Mark David Ledbetter does not accept such a simplistic view of wold affairs. His study of history, contained in three works of towering research, America's Forgotten History: Parts 1-3, tells him that every nation, at some point in its history, has been guilty of genocide or war crimes. It just happens that different nations are at different points of development and engagement with the rest of the world, and therefore, we don't all behave and think the same.

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It reminded me of the time when I was 16, and was beginning to participate in debating competitions; while I delivered a few snappy and bold speeches, I could summon up nothing like the eloquence, depth of content, and breadth of vision that Malala Yousafzai displayed in her amazing speech.

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